Philip Seymour Hoffman was great on the telephone. If you start to think about it, it’s going to be hard to stop. He’s unbelievably, pitifully terrifying foisting phone sex on Jane Adams inHappiness; exploding with frustrated, syncopated rage at Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love; being coolly, almost elegantly threatening in Mission Impossible III; quietly preaching the gospel of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. And in Magnolia,his Phil Parma picks up a preposterously large cellular phone to find his dying patient’s estranged son and realizes that his job, the work that he does for a living, is, to some extent or another, the work of compassion. This was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s work, too. And he did it better than any one else of his generation. Continue reading →